On tour with new book, Jan Brett re-spins Goldilocks story in 'The Mermaid'

Heather McCarron @CountryGazette

Sunday

Nov 19, 2017 at 1:00 AMNov 23, 2017 at 12:08 PM

It's an old tale with a new tail.

In her latest book, "The Mermaid," beloved children's book illustrator and author Jan Brett revisits the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" by setting it in a Japanese-inspired undersea world and centering it around a mermaid and a family of octopuses.

It's just a coincidence that her new book comes out at a time when mermaid mania is making a splash in the world at large - a happy happenstances as Brett begins a promotional tour for"The Mermaid" with an appearance at the Unlikely Story Bookstore in Plainville on Friday, Nov. 24.

For some time before she started work on her latest project, and before the current mermaid trend, Brett knew she wanted to give a new spin to the "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" story with a mermaid taking the place of the little girl with golden ringlets.

But exactly how the story would go, and what creatures would take the place of the bears, was murky at first, she recently confided.

Promotional tour

Brett said she is excited to be promoting "The Mermaid" and she is looking forward to her stop over at the Unlikely Story. The bookstore at 111 South St. in downtown Plainville is owned by fellow world-renowned author Jeff Kinney, creator of the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series.

"It’s a pretty famous store as far as independent bookstores," Brett said.

She'll be giving a 20-minute presentation starting at 5 p.m. Brett fans may still get a chance to listen in, and get their books autographed, by visiting the store's website at www.anunlikelystory.com to register and reserve tickets at $5 each.

Going on tour, Brett said, is a nice chance "to get out and see what people like about the books."

She is traveling in a bus wrapped in art from her book, which will be parked behind the bookstore and will be a fun backdrop for photos.

During her visit, Brett said, she'll do a drawing demonstration and will recreate either the mermaid or the octopus from "The Mermaid" to give an inside look into what goes into creating her books.

"One of my purposes besides introducing people to the book is to encourage them with drawing, and show them 'it’s fun and I can embellish it and create a world around it,'" Brett said.

Underwater revelation

As they often do, the details for "The Mermaid," came to Brett as she was doing something far and away from her art studio at her Norwell home: Swimming off the coast of Okinawa, Japan during a visit to the island where her daughter, who is in the Marines, was stationed for 12 years.

"I was snorkeling and I saw a baby octopus, and it was so cute," she recalled.

Seeing the octopus and the "mind blowing" beauty of the Okinawan underwater world it inhabited helped her hone her ideas for "The Mermaid."

"I already knew I wanted to have a mermaid. And I thought this would be the perfect setting for it because the coral reefs are so beautiful," she said.

She'd briefly thought about replacing the three bears with walruses, she revealed, but decided against that because the undersea world in a walrus habitat is much more barren and leaves little scope for imagination and the kind of colorful, detailed illustrations Brett is famous for.

"I wanted a mermaid to be Goldilocks, but what would the bears be?" said the Hingham native. "It wasn’t until I was actually in the water that I figured that out."

When she saw the little octopus, she said, "I thought 'oh my gosh, it’s got to be the octopuses."

The muses seemed to be laughing a little at the New York Times best-selling author and artist by putting an octopus in her path.

"Octopuses are so hard to draw and they're very hard to make cute," Brett said. "They’re so changeable. They can change their shape, they can change their color, they can raise bumps on their bodies so they can camouflage; they’re very famous for getting into small little nooks and crannies."

Brett forged ahead with the octopus family, and did her usual detailed research that included arranging for interaction with the New England Aquarium's resident giant Pacific octopus, Sy.

When she met Sy, Brett admitted, she was very nervous knowing that octopuses can either take a liking to someone and be friendly, or go the opposite way. Brett had nothing to worry about,though, as Sy was very curious and playful with her.

When Brett offered a fish, Sy would come up as if to greet her, and then "she’d put her arms around me and all of a sudden my arms would be trapped. Meanwhile one arm would be going into the food bucket."

"They’re interesting characters," said Brett, who hopes the octopuses she created in "The Mermaid" inspire kids to want to learn more about them.

Goldilocks zone

Brett said she has long been attracted to the Goldilocks story, and she has in fact done two other iterations of the story in her 1992 book, "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," and her 2007 book, "The Three Snow Bears," an Eskimo-inspired version in which Goldilocks is an Inuit and the bears are polar bears.

In "The Mermaid," when Kiniro, a young mermaid, comes upon a gorgeous house made of seashells and coral, she is so curious that she goes inside. But when the Octopus family returns home, they are not happy to find someone has been eating their food and using their things.

"In this book the little girl goes into the house and it’s about curiosity," Brett explained. "I’ve always been intrigued by the whole concept of curiosity and how it’s such a driver for learning and having experiences build up in your life."

It is always her hope, Brett said, to inspire her young readers by introducing them to a diversity of images. Brett is famous for inserting cultural details into her books, and "The Mermaid" is no exception. The octopus family's house of shells is inspired by traditional Okinawan houses, and their clothes and other details are also Japanese inspired, as is the mermaid herself.

In "The Mermaid," the octopus family's dismay in the end turns around when Kiniro gives the baby octopus a gift before swimming off.

"In this book she (the mermaid) takes her prize tiara and she gives it to the baby octopus," Brett said.

The twist, she said, is a way of giving back after the Goldilocks character in the "The Three Snow Bears" escaped still wearing baby bear's best mukluks.

Telling stories with pictures

Brett said she likes being able to tell stories not only with words, but also with illustrations. Many children who are in her target audience are just learning to read and still rely on images.

"They can use their curiosity and their intelligence, which we're all born with, to look at the pictures," she said. "Often I leave things out of the text that we can show in the illustrations."

It's gratifying, Brett said, to see a child looking in a book, studying the illustrations and tracing words and images with their pointer fingers. "It's like they enter the picture book," she said.

Labor of love

It generally takes a year for Brett to complete one book project, and she has been on a schedule of roughly one book a year since her first book, "Annie and the Wild Animals," came out in 1985.

"I think of an idea during the year. A lot of times I'll have three or four ideas bouncing around," Brett said.

Her next project is a story about a tiger. Brett and her husband, Joe Hearne, a musician with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, already made a trip to India for research, and she'll start work on the new book in January or February.

Brett, who often finds inspiration in the natural world, described the creative process as one in which she happily loses herself.

"What I love to do is work late at night and just kind of lose myself in it, and then wake up the next morning and look and say, 'Oh my gosh, I could never repeat that!' It’s almost like the work takes on a world of its own."

Her dream, she said, is to create books that will be a treasured part of her target audience's childhoods.

"That's the way I feel about Beatrix Potter," she said.

As a youngster, Brett was inspired by a beautiful volume of "The Arabian Nights."

"It's even one of the reasons I became an illustrator," she said.

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